Motivational Quotes

Genius

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Genius

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.

Robertson Davies

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.

Beerbohm, Sir Max

One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.

Ray, Man

Genius sits in a glass house -- but in an unbreakable one --conceiving ideas. After giving birth, it falls into madness. Stretches out its hand through the window toward the first person happening by. The demon's claw rips, the iron fist grips. Before, you were a model, mocks the ironic voice between serrated teeth, for me, you are raw material to work on. I throw you against the glass wall, so that you remain stuck there, projected and stuck. (Then come the lovers of art and contemplate the bleeding work from outside. Then come the photographers. New art, it says in the newspaper the following day. The learned journals give it a name that ends in ism.)

Klee, Paul

It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

Stein, Gertrude

The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

Pound, Ezra

Genius is nothing but a great capacity for patience.

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc

10.

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Edison, Thomas A.

11.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

Aristotle

12.

The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

Koestler, Arthur

13.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

15.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Seneca

16.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

17.

Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

18.

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them. Disagree with them. Glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enoughto think they can change the world
Are the ones who do.

Apple Computer

19.

Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.

Erasmus, Desiderius

20.

Geniuses themselves don't talk about the gift of genius, they just talk about hard work and long hours.

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

21.

As it must not, so genius cannot be lawless; for it is even that constitutes its genius -- the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

22.

All the means of action -- the shapeless masses -- the materials -- lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

23.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Carl Sagan

24.

Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.

Stael, Germaine De

25.

Rising genius always shoots out its rays from among the clouds, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady luster.

Irving, Washington

26.

Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties.

Hedge, Francis Herbert

27.

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

There is one subtle but important difference between genius and stupidity and that is that genius has its limits. You'll see yourself clearest in the eyes of your friends.

29.

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

30.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

When human power becomes so great and original that we can account for it only as a kind of divine imagination, we call it genius.

Crashaw, William

33.

Genius is independent of situation.

Churchill, Charles

34.

The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.

Hume, David

35.

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.

William Hazlitt

36.

True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genius.

Thomajan, Puzant Kevork

37.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

38.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

Picasso, Pablo

39.

Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.

Dahlberg, Edward

40.

What makes men of genius, or rather, what they make, is not new ideas, it is that idea -- possessing them -- that what has been said has still not been said enough.

Delacroix, Eugene

41.

To see things in the seed is genius.

Lao-Tzu

42.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

43.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Nabokov, Vladimir

45.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue; and no genius can long or often utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by men around him.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

Calvino, Italo

47.

The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.

Lewes, George Henry

48.

A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.

Adams, Joey Lauren

49.

Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have is this. When I have a subject in mind. I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it... the effort which I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.

Hamilton, Alexander

50.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.

Auden, W. H.